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IGN’s Autumn 2012 Movie Preview – Trailers & More
Coming soon: Zombies, vampires, demons, assassins, and video game valentines!
IGN – Now that the summer is over (so long, superheroes!) we look ahead to what IGN-centric films are on the horizon for September through November. Zombies, demons, the return of 007, and the swan song of Teams Edward and Jacob are just some of what’s in store for filmgoers. Here are all the movies you might want to catch this season!
Release Date: September 7 (US): April 6 (UK); May 21 (AU)
Studio: Summit
#MASen Update: Elizabeth Warren’s DNC Speech Falls Flat, Hit in San Fran., Miss in Mass
In Massachusetts, today’s lead in the Boston Globe says it all about the state of Professor Elizabeth Warren’s campaign — Elizabeth Warren used a national audience Wednesday night to deliver a campaign message that has hit a roadblock back at home.
Added to Warren’s problems, the New York Times reports that real Native American Democrats in Charlotte this week are continuing to hold Warren’s feet to the fire on her bizarre claim that she is a minority. Karen Geronimo, a member of the Mescalero Apache tribe in town for the Democratic convention, knows what she wants from Elizabeth Warren, the Senate candidate from Massachusetts: a blood sample. “Someone needs to make her take a DNA test,” said Ms. Geronimo, whose husband, Harlyn Geronimo, is the great-grandson of the legendary warrior Geronimo. The still-simmering controversy over Ms. Warren’s self-proclaimed American Indian heritage has chased her from the campaign trail in Massachusetts to the convention hall, resonating with a small but vocal constituency: American Indian Democrats. During her academic career, Ms. Warren, a Harvard Law School professor, identified herself as a minority, citing her one thirty-second Cherokee blood, a fact that Republicans pounced on to try to portray her as an opportunist and a fraud. The line on her résumé does not seem to set well with some Indian members of her own party. “If you’re going to be Native, don’t just be Native on paper,” said Lexie LaMere, a Nebraska delegate and member of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska. “What’s troubling is that she’s shown nothing in her history of being involved in Native American issues.”
Over at Reason’s Hit & Run blog, Garrett Quinn says Elizabeth Warren’s DNC Speech Falls Flat. Warren’s speech was an Us vs. Them argument even though her opponent, Sen. Scott Brown, is doing a better job of making it a non-partisan one-on-one contest. Indeed, Warren never mentioned Brown in her DNC speech. As a Republican, Brown has huge institutional disadvantages in Massachusetts that range from registration disparity to the stunning incompetency of the state party to organize at the hyperlocal level. Rocketing to stardom after launching her campaign but struggling since, Warren has somehow managed to fail to meet expectations in a state that is overwhelmingly Democratic. Her enduring a scandal about her reported American Indian heritage and often being outmaneuvered by the Brown campaign has not helped her either.
Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart concurred citing Warren Speech: Hit in San Fran., Miss in Mass. They loved Elizabeth Warren’s DNC speech in San Francisco: ELIZABETH WARREN: Sensible. She projects “sensible,” but don’t mistake that for a lack of passion, or a lack of political instinct. She also projects “relentless.” Warren took a crowd ready to fall in love and sealed the deal. She showed why Scott Brown is in the fight of his brief career. But in Boston they wonder why she failed to mention Scott Brown. But if you passed up the football game to watch it, Warren’s speech had one somewhat curious omission – any mention of her opponent, Scott Brown. And that she is more interested in the national spotlight: She spoke in Charlotte rather than campaign in Charlestown because she wants to nationalize the race and portray Scott Brown as a Republican yes-man who will thwart the Obama agenda. But Brown has an independent voting record. And unlike Warren, Brown didn’t speak at his party’s convention to add volume to their national agenda. If anything, by speaking in prime time last night Warren proved that if elected she would be a “hell, yes” woman for the national Democratic platform, no matter how much the independent majority of voters in Massachusetts thinks it out of step with their views.
Meanwhile, continuing his ongoing dialogue with voters during the DNC convention this week, Scott Brown writes in the Boston Herald today, Unfortunately, my opponent, Elizabeth Warren, subscribes to this way of doing business. She says she will “throw rocks” at people she disagrees with, and that she would prefer “plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor” than compromise. She makes wild accusations against people who simply don’t see things her way. I have strongly held views, but I recognize others have different ideas, and I trust they believe what they do for the same reason I believe what I do — because we think our ideas will lead to a better America for ourselves and future generations.
Finally, continuing to undercut the Democrats’ attacks on him, the Boston Herald reports, Republican Sen. Scott Brown crossed the aisle this morning to join in a chorus of praise for first lady Michelle Obama, who addressed the Democratic National Convention last night. “We’ve met her obviously and Gail has spent more time with her than I have. She’s a striking woman, hard-charging and an exceedingly dedicated family person,” Brown said.
Medieval Church Discovered Beneath Parking Lot
Discovery News – Richard III and his queen, Anne of Neville, appear in a stained glass window in Cardiff Castle. Click to enlarge this image.
University of Leicester
The hunt for King Richard III’s grave is heating up, with archaeologists announcing today (Sept. 5) that they have located the church where the king was buried in 1485.
“The discoveries so far leave us in no doubt that we are on the site of Leicester’s Franciscan Friary, meaning we have crossed the first significant hurdle of the investigation,” Richard Buckley, the lead archaeologist on the dig, said in a statement.
Buckley and his colleagues have been excavating a parking lot in Leicester, England, since Aug. 25. They are searching for Greyfriars church, said to be the final resting place of Richard III, who died in battle during the War of the Roses, an English civil war. A century later, Shakespeare would immortalize Richard III in a play of the same name.
Heritage: Clinton Is Wrong on Welfare Reform
Originally posted at The Foundry by Amy Payne
Last night, in his nationally televised speech, former President Bill Clinton said the charge that President Obama has gutted welfare reform was “a real doozy.”
Clinton, who vetoed welfare reform twice before signing the welfare reform law in 1996, echoed the Obama Administration and media “fact checkers,” who have sworn that Obama’s Health and Human Services Department (HHS) is actually trying to strengthen the work requirements of the law by doing away with them.
The fact is that the Administration has gutted welfare reform, and Heritage has detailed reports on exactly how—and what the consequences will be. Heritage expert Robert Rector, who helped write the 1996 law, answered Clinton this morning in no uncertain terms:
The Obama Administration will put in mothballs the formal purpose of welfare reform—to reduce the number of people dependent on government benefits. The Administration will abandon the legislative performance goal that encourages states to reduce welfare caseloads. It will weaken the “work participation” standards that require some 30 percent of able-bodied Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients to engage in work activities for 20 to 30 hours per week.
This week, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) also gave notice to the Administration that this type of law change must go through Congress.
After Heritage’s Rector and Kiki Bradley broke the story July 12 that HHS was gutting the work requirements by allowing states to obtain waivers, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Representative Dave Camp (R-MI) asked the GAO to review the Administration’s actions. Heritage legal experts Todd Gaziano, Robert Alt, and Andrew Grossman have already detailed why the Administration’s actions are illegal—HHS has no authority to grant the type of waivers it is creating.
The GAO told the lawmakers on Tuesday that the law changes should have been submitted to Congress.
Last night, Clinton defended Obama’s HHS, saying that it would waive the work requirements for states “only if they had a credible plan to increase employment by 20 percent and they could keep the waivers only if they did increase employment. Now, did—did I make myself clear? The requirement was for more work, not less.”
It may sound convincing, but Rector explains why this is a meaningless measure:
In the typical state, 1.5 percent of the TANF caseload leaves welfare and obtains work each month. Thus, any state can be fully exempted from the TANF work requirements if it raises the number of exits to 1.8 percent. This is a miniscule change. What will the other 98.2 percent of the caseload be doing? No one knows for sure. But one thing we do know for certain: They will be exempt from the federal “work participation” requirements established in the welfare reform law.
The 1996 reforms were an outstanding success. Poverty, especially among black Americans, dropped substantially. Employment of the most disadvantaged single mothers increased dramatically. These are not reforms that should be gutted. These are reforms that should be a signature accomplishment of the Clinton presidency. Unfortunately, he is repudiating his own accomplishment to cover for the Obama Administration.
READ UP:
Did Republican governors try to do the same thing the Obama Administration has done? Read the answer here.
Ending Work for Welfare: An Overview by Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield
Welfare Work Requirements: Vague Replacement of Work for Welfare by Robert Rector
Ending Work for Welfare: Bogus Measures of Success by Robert Rector
Media “Fact Checkers” Promote Obama’s Gutting of Welfare Reform by Amy Payne
Welfare Work Requirements: Vague Replacement of Work for Welfare
by Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield
In July, the Obama Administration waived the core work requirements of the historic welfare reform law of 1996, which law required a portion of the able-bodied recipients in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving aid. The new bureaucratic directive from Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) declared that in the future, neither states nor TANF recipients would have to obey these workfare requirements. It replaces those work requirements with new, vague standards devised by HHS without any congressional input, such as “employment exits”[1] and “universal engagement.”
The mainstream press has defended this illegal waiver,[2] declaring that the Obama Administration merely wants to “tweak” the law’s work standards. But the Obama policy does not “tweak” the work provisions in the law. In fact, it does not just weaken the law’s work requirements; in many cases, the policy would bypass those work requirements entirely. The HHS directive establishing the new policy[3] repeatedly asserts that the Administration will exempt states from the law’s “work participation requirements” and replace those work requirements with new standards devised by HHS without any congressional input.
“Universal Engagement”
Under the section of its executive guidance labeled “HHS Priorities,” the Obama Administration explicitly declares that it will give waivers to promote state policies that use a “universal engagement system in lieu of certain participation rate requirements” (emphasis added).[4] “Universal engagement” usually means a policy that seeks to have all adult work-eligible TANF recipients engage in constructive activities for at least one hour per week. Activities are defined very broadly to include things such as visiting a doctor or looking for day care.[5]
Universal engagement can be a positive policy if it is used in conjunction with existing TANF work standards. But that is not what HHS is proposing: If the goal were to combine universal engagement with existing work participation standards, there would be no need to waive the existing law. Instead, HHS explicitly asserts that states should use universal engagement “in lieu of” the work participation standards in the TANF law.
So the standards of the reform law that require 30–40 percent of the adult TANF caseload to engage in clearly defined activities for 20–30 hours per week will be replaced by a new standard urging all adult TANF recipients to engage in vaguely defined activities for one hour per week.
In addition, HHS wants to weaken “verification procedures.” This means that the information provided to federal policymakers on actual activities performed by TANF recipients will be reduced, making it difficult to determine even if the one hour of activity per week is actually being performed.
The Obama Administration has tossed aside the work requirements written in the welfare reform law. In its waiver policy, the Administration has explicitly granted itself unlimited authority to establish future new work policies of its own choosing. Still, the Administration asserts that it should be trusted: It promises that it is merely “tweaking” the workfare system and is not really going to grant any waivers that make any significant changes. Regrettably, the Administration has already proved itself untrustworthy by flagrantly violating the welfare reform law by illegally claiming the authority to waive the work requirements in the first place.
Breaking Promises
It is noteworthy that the Administration has not produced any historical evidence to show that Congress intended to grant HHS authority to waive the TANF work requirements. The historical record is clear on this point. As the summary of the reform law prepared by Congress shortly after enactment plainly states, “Waivers granted after the date of enactment may not override provisions of the TANF law that concern mandatory work requirements.”[6]
In the first 15 years after the enactment of welfare reform, no waivers of work requirements were issued by HHS. Indeed, no such waivers were ever mentioned or discussed, because it was abundantly clear to all parties that Congress had never granted such waiver authority to HHS.
The Administration now promises that it will only strengthen workfare. But it also promised to “faithfully execute the laws of the United States.” It has already violated that promise by violating the letter and spirit of the 1996 welfare reform law and overturning the TANF work requirements in the first place. All the evidence suggests it will break its promises not to weaken workfare as well. This is no way to build on the success of welfare reform.
Robert Rector is Senior Research Fellow in the Domestic Policy Studies Department at The Heritage Foundation.
Under the Fedora Eastwood, Atheists and a Tale of Two Platforms
Last week the GOP convention took place in Tampa, it was shorted by a day due to the Hurricane but as far as the media is concerned the only person who spoke during that week was Clint Eastwood.
Eastwood’s speech was totally unexpected. Not only was nobody expecting a comedy routine, but the style of the comedy was something out of the early sixties. A time Eastwood would remember well but the audience familiar with Eastwood would have forgotten.
The media has been unanimous in it’s condemnation of the quality of the Eastwood business, it’s been a foolish, it’s been bizarre it’s been the joke of the RNC and Eastwood is a old man who doesn’t know what he’s doing.
The only problem with this argument is the reaction has been exactly the opposite, Eastwood’s empty chair has produced “Empty Chair Day”, the empty chair (with apologies to Amsterdam & Newheart) is now known as “Eastwooding” and we’ve even reached the point where people are urging the DNC to bring in it’s own elderly advocate in the form of Betty White to help boost the cause, and as late as Tuesday, Eastwood related items topped Memeorandum and if you go to the front page of CNN’s web page today.
Maybe it’s just me, but that doesn’t sound like a joke, an oddity or a failure. I mean you actually had a union president beating up on a chair in response to Eastwood:
“Mitt Romney doesn’t have anything to say, Paul Ryan doesn’t have anything to say.”
Things took a dark turn when he then kicked and threw the chair, yelling “Dirty Harry, make my day! We’re gonna kick ass in November!” The crowd nevertheless, cheered him on.
Fear makes people do very weird things. These people are scared.
But that’s not odd, it’s not the first time Eastwoods foes have been afraid of him.
Meanwhile there were a lot of other speakers at the RNC that the left found less interesting, the ignored Mia Love, the passed on Artur Davis on MSNBC but his speech while not producing a reaction from MSNBC certainly managed to drive Roland Martin up a wall.
What did Davis say that was so damaging to the left? This:
“There are Americans watching right now who voted for the President but they’re searching right now, because they know their votes didn’t build the country they wanted. To those democrats and Independents whose minds are open to argument, listen closely to the Democratic party that will gather in Charlotte, ask yourself if you hear your voice in the clamor, ask if these Democrats still speak for you?
This was the re-occurring theme of the GOP convention and of speaker after speaker, not so much a reaffirmation for true believers but a message reaching out to those who voted the other way saying: It’s OK to switch.
Oddly enough Mitt Romney, who gave a pretty good speech, has become almost an afterthought. That was both good, (the media and the left was too busy hitting Eastwood to lay a glove on Mitt), and bad (lot of people didn’t get much exposure to what he had to say).
Still a good week for him.
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There also were a lot of questions about the RNC platform on Abortion, no specific exception for rape and incest. Never mind that this is the same platform line that they’ve had for years, in the Age of Akin this is breaking news to the MSM.
Strangely enough this week we there were some major changes to the DNC platform that came out. The document came out for taxpayer funded abortion, the media yawned.
Language favoring Israel was removed.
Below is the section missing from the 2012 document. Pay special attention to the areas in bold (H/T @RJCHQ) :
The United States and its Quartet partners should continue to isolate Hamas until it renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel’s right to exist, and abides by past agreements. Sustained American leadership for peace and security will require patient efforts and the personal commitment of the President of the United States. The creation of a Palestinian state through final status negotiations, together with an international compensation mechanism, should resolve the issue of Palestinian refugees by allowing them to settle there, rather than in Israel. All understand that it is unrealistic to expect the outcome of final status negotiations to be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949. Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel.The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.
Each of these items are crucial to Israel and each have been key areas of contention for those who believe this President has not been friendly to the Jewish State.
And the MSM didn’t blink an eye, never mind there was a time when risking a split with American Jews would be big news, that would be front page headlines, in every paper and every newscast there is.
But there was a bigger change that came up.
For years religious types have been moving away from the Democrat party. In their last platform the word “God” only had a single appearance. This time around they don’t even have that, which produced an incredible piece of video when Brett Baier dared to ask Dick Durbin about it.
Outside of Fox this got very little press, Piers Morgan asked Debbie Wasserman Schultz about it and her answer was classic
“What I can tell you is our policies and our values are is reflected in many faith traditions and that what our platform is all about.”
What a generic piece of pabulum this is. I can’t believe a party chairman would be willing to say it aloud.
On the plus side her hair looks great, she should keep the new “do”
While a platform Sans God might play poorly with the general public, it is playing well with the atheist movement, they might be celebrating if they weren’t so busy feuding among themselves.
Atheism ought to be a progressive social movement in addition to being a philosophical and scientific position, because living in a godless universe means something to humanity.
That’ PZ Myers last seen putting nails through Eucharist hosts. And according to Myers what happens if you don’t buy into this new Athiest club (known as Athiest+) well:
And if you don’t agree with any of that — and this is the only ‘divisive’ part — then you’re an asshole. I suggest you form your own label, “Asshole Atheists” and own it, proudly.
Yeah this is really going to play well in Peoria
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Doctor who came back finally this week, we had a good but tragic story that was a real tear jerker but I was really annoyed to see what they did with the new companion.
I think Stephen Moffat is a brilliant writer, Silence in the Library and Blink were classic episodes as was Time Crash featuring the 5th doctor meeting the 10th.
But since he became the head of the series it’s as if every story was a temporal paradox.
I like Kentucky Derby Pie, but if that’s all you eat every day, it loses its luster.
Finally the Brett Kimberlin crowd continues to issue threats to all concerned of Lawsuits and worse but his record in court doesn’t seem to be doing too well:
And then Kimberlin foolishly rested without asking me to authenticate the documents that were allegedly by me. (I didn’t highlight this mistake when discussing the case because I hoped he would continue to make that mistake.) At that point, my able attorney, Reginald Bours III stood up and said:
I’m going to ask that you [the court] make a finding now that the petitioner [Kimberlin] has not met, even initially, the burden of proof required under the statute.
In other words, Bours felt that Kimberlin’s presentation was so feeble that a defense was not necessary. Every person is presumed not to have violated the peace order statute until they have been proven by the petitioner to have done so. And further, an appeal to the circuit court it is a trial de novo, which means it is an entirely new trial, with the presumption I am “innocent” until proven “guilty” just like in the first trial. (Or more precisely they presume I did nothing justifying a peace order until Kimberlin proves I had.) The court agreed and dismissed the petition.
There is still a long way to go in this case but if I was a betting man I’d be betting against the bad guys here, oh and if you want to help the fight there is a rather cool auction going on with some great items from artist Chris Muir of Day by Day
Each 11″ x 19″ print has been signed by the following giants of the Blogosphere: Michelle Malkin, Glenn and Helen Reynolds (Instapundit and Dr.Helen), Bill Whittle (Afterburner), Jeff Goldstein (Protein Wisdom), Ed Morrissey (Hot Air), Robert Stacy McCain (The Other McCain), and Mandy Nagy (Liberty Chick).
And now you can get a copy of the print in one of two ways. Two of them will be raffled off. The third will be auctioned off.
And all proceeds will go to the Blogger’s Defense Team.
Sounds like a worthy investment to me
Video: Johnny Rocco Explains how Democrats Vote on God and Jerusalem
They’re stopping the presses to figure out how to say with a straight face that maybe the Ayes really did have it over the Nays today when the Democrats tried to restore God and Jerusalem to their platform.
Readers of USA today would be hard-pressed to understand what all the fuss is about from today’s reporting by David Jackson.
Approved on a voice vote, the party platform now mentions God and declares Jerusalem as the capital of Israel — two previous omissions that had been attacked by Republicans and other political organizations… Many delegates in the half-empty hall booed the changes. The convention chairman, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, had to call for a voice vote three tines [sic] before the additions were approved.
Perhaps Jackson had trouble keeping up with this fork in the road that stumped Villaraigosa hilariously not once, but twice before he soldiered on and just declared the damn thing passed. This odd procedure was helpfully explained by someone the intrepid press has only identified thus far as ”a woman standing to his left” who arrived to explain to the hapless Villaraigosa the way of the world:
You’ve got to rule, and then you’ve got to let them do what they’re gonna do.
Thankfully we have Edward G. Robinson as Johnny Rocco in Key Largo to explain how democratic voting works.
Cross-posted from BulletPeople.com.
